You broke a bale and scattered August on
the frozen stable boards. December sagged,
her arching tail switched steadily at dawn.
We waited, talked of heifers, fogged and flagged
the conversation cleverly around
a frigid barn. December didn’t care,
she raised her head, was bearing down,
preoccupied with something in the air.
She pushed until we saw two hoofs appear;
the long gestation ruptured, braved the chill
and steaming, slipped into the atmosphere.
December stood and letting down her milk,
wasted streams of warmth around her feet.
We watched until our silence stretched like hands
through polar fronts and taciturn cool sheets.
The moon fell down, the newborn tried to stand,
but vapor veiled our faces as we laughed
together at December’s wobbly calf.

Unwinding, hissing, passing eons out,
ballooning flapped, elastic: time’s disease.
The years deflated under winter drought,
while oceans were reduced to antifreeze.
Through complicated wars of circumstance,
in heat and dust, a few survived. Though stiff
at first, our body-language did advance
and printed verse became a hieroglyph
and sneezed. Exotic font and serif said
it all, to modern scholars looking back
from Times New Roman, Palatine, instead
of Courier, Papyrus, Copper Black.
The future pouring over poems found
the curvature of letter minus sound.

Possessing not the insight found in time,
that wraps a journey unaware, and claps
inaudibly in cadence, fractal rhymes.
We yawp, express this life in tattered scraps
of what we feel and map what seems so new,
but is it fresh or just repeated strolls;
the human gait still searching for a clue.
Insisting on rewriting former scrolls
of dead ideas there inked by bygone blooms
of us. Immersed and yoked with joy and pain,
the wonder of encounters since the womb,
our consciousness evovles beyond the brain.
Alive, unchaperoned and forth we go,
from youth through death recalling what we know.